House Purchase Delays

Author
Discussion

romeogolf

Original Poster:

2,056 posts

118 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
We're purchasing a home and the agent is Purple Bricks, so it's all contact via the vendor, not anyone at Purple Bricks.

Our offer was accepted 15 Jan, solicitors instructed 30 Jan and the paperwork they sent us with TR1 etc was sent back to them by 2nd March.

I've followed up with our solicitors on the 6 March who said they were waiting for responses to queries from the other side. I then contacted the vendor on the 8th along these lines and he replied on 10th March that he had sent these responses so things 'should start moving'.

Having heard nothing else, I contacted our solicitors on the 14th March who informed me that the replies received were incomplete and they're now chasing for complete responses. Our mortgage broker followed up on 16th March and received the same response.

I'm not really sure who else to chase and we're moving closer to the date we may need to leave our (rented) flat and have nothing confirmed. We were hoping to complete in mid-May, and thought 4 months was plenty of time.

Is this sort of delay normal? What else can we do to move things along?

Craikeybaby

10,369 posts

224 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
Chase them up every day. Turn round everything they ask you to do same day/next day at the latest. Let them know you have a deadline.

outnumbered

4,067 posts

233 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
Is there a chain (i.e., where is the person whose house you are buying, moving to) ? That will have a big impact on how long things take.

anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
romeogolf said:
We're purchasing a home and the agent is Purple Bricks,
Therein lies the root of your problem.

romeogolf

Original Poster:

2,056 posts

118 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
outnumbered said:
Is there a chain (i.e., where is the person whose house you are buying, moving to) ? That will have a big impact on how long things take.
No chain on either side. We're moving out of rented, and they're moving in with family.

MDMA .

8,849 posts

100 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
digimeistter said:
romeogolf said:
We're purchasing a home and the agent is Purple Bricks,
Therein lies the root of your problem.
and dealing with solicitors smile

give them a completion date or you're prepared to walk. that soon speeds things up. did that on my last move. sorted within the same week. funny how the thought of not being paid gets things moving along.

Road2Ruin

5,167 posts

215 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
romeogolf said:
We're purchasing a home and the agent is Purple Bricks, so it's all contact via the vendor, not anyone at Purple Bricks.

Our offer was accepted 15 Jan, solicitors instructed 30 Jan and the paperwork they sent us with TR1 etc was sent back to them by 2nd March.

I've followed up with our solicitors on the 6 March who said they were waiting for responses to queries from the other side. I then contacted the vendor on the 8th along these lines and he replied on 10th March that he had sent these responses so things 'should start moving'.

Having heard nothing else, I contacted our solicitors on the 14th March who informed me that the replies received were incomplete and they're now chasing for complete responses. Our mortgage broker followed up on 16th March and received the same response.

I'm not really sure who else to chase and we're moving closer to the date we may need to leave our (rented) flat and have nothing confirmed. We were hoping to complete in mid-May, and thought 4 months was plenty of time.

Is this sort of delay normal? What else can we do to move things along?
It took you 15 days to instruct your solicitor, a month and two days to send paperwork back and you are complaining about someone taking their time...;)

8-P

2,756 posts

259 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
My estate agent was the driving force behind our move, so I suspect you dont have that sort of push from PB. The top of our chain had a bee in his bonnet about move dates even though he was going into a family house! Either way, the estate agent was all over it and very regularly onto the legals. Some incentive that the 3 houses in the chain were all theres for commission and the value was well over 2 million.

Steve Evil

10,653 posts

228 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
Road2Ruin said:
It took you 15 days to instruct your solicitor, a month and two days to send paperwork back and you are complaining about someone taking their time...;)
hehe I was thinking the same.

romeogolf

Original Poster:

2,056 posts

118 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
Steve Evil said:
Road2Ruin said:
It took you 15 days to instruct your solicitor, a month and two days to send paperwork back and you are complaining about someone taking their time...;)
hehe I was thinking the same.
Hah, we only received TR1 etc on 21st Feb and were away that week, so sent them back the day we returned. I think the date I have for instructing them is just the date they wrote back to confirm rather than when we first contacted them which would have probably been a day or two after the mortgage offer was returned (19 Jan).



anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
I completely fail to understand why you are having to chase the sale yourself, why are Purple Bricks not doing it?

After all! aren't they 'real estate agents, you just don't pay commission' hehe

N90BAR

18 posts

89 months

Tuesday 21st March 2017
quotequote all
Readying your story I almost thought you wrrr our buyer until I look more closely! We've sold mid Jan using PB. To be honest I've enjoyed dealing with the purchaser directly - we've managed to discuss a few things directly without going through all the "middle men". In terms of your time scale - were working to very similar so I do understand your concerns. All I can suggest, as others have - that you deal with things as soon as they come to you and don't delay. Fingers crossed it all works out for you.

romeogolf

Original Poster:

2,056 posts

118 months

Wednesday 22nd March 2017
quotequote all
digimeistter said:
I completely fail to understand why you are having to chase the sale yourself, why are Purple Bricks not doing it?

After all! aren't they 'real estate agents, you just don't pay commission' hehe
I think it's an accepted balance that you pay less, but get a lower level of service. They don't assist with the sale, they just advertise it, taking good photos (well, debatable) and producing a floorplan etc. To be fair, it's been quite nice so far to deal direct with the seller, it's just a bit frustrating as buyer knowing that there's no one else waiting for their money who might have an incentive to work for it.

Rangeroverover

1,522 posts

110 months

Friday 24th March 2017
quotequote all
digimeistter said:
I completely fail to understand why you are having to chase the sale yourself, why are Purple Bricks not doing it?

After all! aren't they 'real estate agents, you just don't pay commission' hehe
Now you understand why if you are selling with PB, agents are reluctant to accept an offer from you, agents know that there will be no information going up and down keeping the chain together.....god forbid you use their conveyancing arm then life will become impossible.

I am yet to meet a PB client who was happy with the way things went, I love it when our negs go out to see a vendor who has tried PB

Henners

12,230 posts

193 months

Friday 24th March 2017
quotequote all
romeogolf said:
digimeistter said:
I completely fail to understand why you are having to chase the sale yourself, why are Purple Bricks not doing it?

After all! aren't they 'real estate agents, you just don't pay commission' hehe
I think it's an accepted balance that you pay less, but get a lower level of service. They don't assist with the sale, they just advertise it, taking good photos (well, debatable) and producing a floorplan etc. To be fair, it's been quite nice so far to deal direct with the seller, it's just a bit frustrating as buyer knowing that there's no one else waiting for their money who might have an incentive to work for it.
I've mentioned before that we bought though an online EA, worked well. Only hold up was on the solicitor side, which I chased down through a few phone calls - easy.

Dealing with the vendor was nice too, built some rapport blah blah.

We'll be selling through an online, I really don't see the value in what I'd get extra by using a traditional EA, other than a bill which is a few £k higher.

GrumpyTwig

3,354 posts

156 months

Friday 24th March 2017
quotequote all
Rangeroverover said:
digimeistter said:
I completely fail to understand why you are having to chase the sale yourself, why are Purple Bricks not doing it?

After all! aren't they 'real estate agents, you just don't pay commission' hehe
Now you understand why if you are selling with PB, agents are reluctant to accept an offer from you, agents know that there will be no information going up and down keeping the chain together.....god forbid you use their conveyancing arm then life will become impossible.

I am yet to meet a PB client who was happy with the way things went, I love it when our negs go out to see a vendor who has tried PB
Well now you've heard of another one who fell foul, would advise anyone to use a decent brick and mortar agent over them and especially their conveyancing 'partners' were utter trash. In the end it was the agents on my purchase that were more helpful than anyone I was paying directly.

Sunnysider

106 posts

91 months

Friday 24th March 2017
quotequote all


I sold an empty property of ours last year with Purple Bricks and they were brilliant from start to finish and did everything both we and the buyers asked of them efficiently and quickly.

The problem with a sale dragging on interminably is, as always, with inept and bone idle solicitors dragging things out and making ridiculous demands of either the seller or the buyer.

We had a long list of ridiculous requests from the buyers conveyancers, including asking for both our original and copy of the HETAS certificate for the open fire we'd installed, despite the certificate being freely available online.

Edited to add: I didn't use PBs conveyancers.

Edited by Sunnysider on Friday 24th March 20:52

Rude-boy

22,227 posts

232 months

Saturday 25th March 2017
quotequote all
Sunnysider said:
I sold an empty property of ours last year with Purple Bricks and they were brilliant from start to finish and did everything both we and the buyers asked of them efficiently and quickly.

The problem with a sale dragging on interminably is, as always, with inept and bone idle solicitors dragging things out and making ridiculous demands of either the seller or the buyer.

We had a long list of ridiculous requests from the buyers conveyancers, including asking for both our original and copy of the HETAS certificate for the open fire we'd installed, despite the certificate being freely available online.

Edited to add: I didn't use PBs conveyancers.

Edited by Sunnysider on Friday 24th March 20:52
If is was such a ridiculous request then why did you not just download, attach to an email and send on to your conveyancer to forward to the Buyers? Actually why was it you had not retained the original of this Building Regulations certificate of compliance? Thinking about it when you completed Form TA6 which part of that for suggested to you that you should not provide copies of all Building Regulation and Planning Permissions you may have relating to the Property.

Sunnysider

106 posts

91 months

Saturday 25th March 2017
quotequote all
Rude-boy said:
If is was such a ridiculous request then why did you not just download, attach to an email and send on to your conveyancer to forward to the Buyers? Actually why was it you had not retained the original of this Building Regulations certificate of compliance? Thinking about it when you completed Form TA6 which part of that for suggested to you that you should not provide copies of all Building Regulation and Planning Permissions you may have relating to the Property.
The point is that the conveyancers had already looked up the HETAS cert online so they knew it existed and could have easily downloaded it themselves, so to ask for a copy initially and the original from me on completion was both pointless and bureaucratic, which sums up the whole ridiculously flabby conveyancing procedure in a nutshell.

Tomo1971

1,127 posts

156 months

Saturday 25th March 2017
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However long you think that it should take, double it, add three weeks and hope for the best.

Solicitors are laws upon themselves when it comes to conveyancing - its as if they are on an hourly rate and try to drag it out for as long as they can. One would think that as most are on a fixed price, it would be better to get it finished as soon as they can.

Mind you, our solicitor, we used them in 2004 for a first house (with no issues, but again, as FTB's probably in not so much a rush) and then again last year. I kid you not, the office hasn't changed - the computer in use looks like its the same one from 2004, everything seems to be done via paper/letter/fax rather than by email. When they wanted to query something simple with us, they sent a letter - for goodness sake, send an email or pick up the dam phone!

Frustrated much.... oh no.... not me...... honest....